


Reverent

by FeatherQuilt88



Series: The Amber Dragon Anthology [18]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Air Nomads (Avatar), Cute Kids, Expectant Parents, Fire Lord Zuko, Four Elements, Friendship, Gen, Hope, Joyful, Politics, Post-Canon, Prayer, Pregnancy, Rebuilding, Song - Freeform, Trigger Warning: Brief Vomiting, puppet show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 03:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21190736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeatherQuilt88/pseuds/FeatherQuilt88
Summary: The story of the Air Nomads' return, told mostly through Iroh's eyes. (Obviously canon-divergent for the comics and LOK, as is all of my "Amber Dragon" series.)





	Reverent

**Author's Note:**

> For readers new to my "Amber Dragon" fanfic series--in it, Zuko is married to Jin, Iroh lives near them in a new teashop (the Amber Dragon) in Capital City, Iroh has adopted my fancharacter Chiko, and Iroh calls Zuko his son now as well.
> 
> Since, as mentioned, this ATLA fanfic series of mine doesn't flow into LOK, this has always been the way I imagined the Air Nomads coming back into the world in it. It just made sense, to me, that there would have been a _few_ who had escaped Sozin's genocide all along (here in my own fanwork AU).
> 
> I also found the canon detail of "Air Nomad army" propaganda (from the episode "The Headband") to be very significant. I built upon it a lot here.

It is with mixed feelings that Iroh remembers the day his own father, Azulon, took him down to the Dragon Bone catacombs.

Like all Fire Nation children at the time, young Prince Iroh had been taught that the Air Nomads had launched guerrilla attacks against their people. That their brave soldiers had retaliated, and had driven the savage Air Nomads back so soundly, so far, that they had cowered in their temples. That then, those wicked, savage Air Nomads had been brought to justice, with fire and sword.

The Air Nomad women and children, and non-combative men... were never mentioned. When Iroh, or any other schoolchild, had asked about them, they had been given vague answers. It was as if some of the adults didn't know themselves.

"They threw themselves off the cliffs in fear."

"Their evil warrior-folk killed them themselves--sucked the air right out of their lungs, rather than let them be liberated."

"They simply died off, with no one to care for them."

When he had shown Iroh the scroll of Sozin's journal--the Secret Histories, the firsthand account of what had happened--Azulon had appeared cold and detached (as he often was about everything), but faintly approving. He had spoken to Iroh of how his own late father had "shown the strength to do what had to be done."

After the old Fire Lord had walked away, his teenaged son had vomited on the pavement.

They were _people,_ and they were _alive,_ and... they had been MURDERED.

Not just the warriors. There hadn't _been_ any warriors.

They had all been murdered.

They were people, and they had been alive.

_Forgive me a thousand times for my own transgressions,_ Iroh prays to Heaven, as he has many times before; _forgive me that I continued to wage war for so many years, causing deaths amongst the soldiers on both sides, even if my aim was to conquer instead of wipe out. But thank You that I had enough humanity in me, even then, to still be horrified at what my grandfather had done._

***

Iroh is a little too old to go adventuring... but when Aang and his friends had come calling, saying they needed a Firebender to make the group complete, he couldn't refuse them, now could he?

The little Avatar had found clues, he'd said, to an ancient sanctuary, a system of caves deep underground, where a small group of Air Nomads had fled and survived. Of course there had always been _rumors_ about that... and the rumors had been thicker when he was a small boy, Iroh remembered, than they had become in more recent decades. Nowadays no one believed any Air Nomads could have survived that long. The chances were very slim.

But Aang's friends _couldn't_ let him down. It meant so much to their beloved little Avatar--and, potentially, to the world. They had to at least _search,_ there in the Earth Kingdom canyons.

Zuko and Jin had both wanted so badly to come--but at this stage in Jin's pregnancy, she simply wouldn't have been able to handle the rough journey. And Zuko would not leave her side.

Ah well, Iroh is still spry, and it has only been a few days' trip, on Appa's broad back. He won't be gone from his children's sides for very long, and he knows they can take care of each other, for a _short_ while. And Iroh so enjoys getting to know his other young friends, too.

At the moment, he is sitting with Toph on the canyon's rocky floor, near the cave-mouth that marks their long-awaited goal.

Iroh _is_ much too old to go spelunking--and between that and Toph's Earth senses (to which Iroh can add his eyes), they have been elected the logical ones to stand guard as lookouts. (There was also the mostly-unspoken fact that, _if_ some small group of Air Nomads had survived--and had passed down stories for the last three generations--having a Firebender amongst the discovery group might have alarmed them. _Especially_ a Firebender who happened to be the grandson of Sozin--the horrible monster who had forced them to flee in the first place.)

There's a tremor in the ground now. "I can feel it!" Toph yelps. "Something's coming, something big!"

Iroh sets his teacup down quickly. Rocks and dust burst from the sides of the cave. The old man gasps at the sight before him. He lets out a strangled cheer--so many emotions behind it, it is nearly impossible to categorize them all. An old hymn, from centuries before the war, suddenly escapes his lips, as he cries with reverence up to the sky.

_His mother, Ilah, had sung this song for him, once, during one of the rare visits they had been allowed to her parents, out in the countryside. "Some people think it's unpatriotic, now, to sing of the elements being in harmony. But I DO think it's a lovely little tune," she had hesitated, holding her son's hand (still so small in hers, yet also so large and broad, for a five-year-old's!). "...You mustn't tell your father, all right, Iroh? Promise me."_

_Iroh had promised. So Ilah had sung for him. And the little prince had delighted in the tune, there on the grassy hill, even if he hadn't paid it much thought, back then._

_He had remembered snatches of it, somehow, after all these years. And when the restoration of old literature had begun, after Ozai's regime had fallen, Iroh had looked up that little hymn again, and had memorized it. He wasn't quite sure WHY he had done that._

_And now, suddenly, he knows. It was all for this day. Somehow he'd ALWAYS known. Somehow._

"Praise be to the Water, its waves deep and tall;  
Praise be to the Earth, standing firm, standing long.  
Praise be to the Fire, warming where sunbeams fall--"

Iroh's guttural old voice nearly cracks with awe and joy, as he _shouts_ the fourth verse.

"PRAISE BE TO THE AIR, FILLING BREATH, SKY, AND SONG!!  
Praise be to the Great Heart, holding them all!"

Toph grabs her elderly friend's silken sleeves, tugging urgently at them. "What's happening, Gramps?! _I can't see the sky!_" she reminds him, her squeaky little voice half-eager, half-frightened. "What is it up there that came out of the cave?!"

Tears are streaming down Iroh's face, and Toph can tell that well enough, by the way he sobs out the words. "It's _beautiful,_ Toph," Iroh squeezes his friend's little hand reassuringly. "There are sky-bison, a whole herd of them. They're following Appa in the clouds. And there are _people_ riding them, and flying beside them, too, flying in the air. They're Airbenders, Toph, _Airbenders_ like Aang!" he lets her know.

Iroh wishes he knew how to describe what "blue" and "orange" and "yellow" were, to the young blind girl. The colors of the Air Nomads' clothes against the sky are so joyous. As is his rough old voice, as it breaks again. "They're _people,_ and they're _alive,_" he suddenly whispers.

"Aaah, hey!" Toph almost loses her balance, as Iroh sweeps her into a bear hug, jumping and laughing excitedly. "THEY'RE PEOPLE, AND THEY'RE _ALIIIIIIVE!!!_" the old man screams with joy.

_THANK YOU,_ he suddenly prays, _for letting me live to see this. I am old, yet You have allowed me the years to see my grandfather's evil legacy crumble before my eyes. I am so unworthy, yet You chose ME to be the herald, to sing a welcome to these people, as they fly back into our world. Thank You!!_

***

The dismantling of Ozai's (and Azulon's, and Sozin's) propaganda has already been in progress, for the past few years. But Fire Lord Zuko has some new, important questions to address now, with the Air Nomads' return. The most important of these, encapsulating them all, is simply, "How do we make sure that this _never_ happens again?"

Zuko spreads his carefully-written notes across his desk in the council chamber. Yet he breathes heavily, and speaks from his heart, as he always does. He is meeting with the education leaders today--discussing what the new curriculum will be for the Fire children. "Teach them the horror of the deeds that have been done, yes," the young lord partially agrees with his advisors; "but don't just _leave_ them there, empty and rootless. Teach them of the past further back, when the four nations were friends, and times were good. And tell them how Sozin's evil lie destroyed all that happiness!"

"The lie of the Air Nomads having an army, and attacking us?" a few of the councilmen and women ask, the ornaments on their topknots tilting, jangling.

"No," Zuko shakes his head; "not _that_ lie--the even bigger one. Tell them that the Air aggression _was_ a lie, yes, but don't make that the main point. Sometimes parties from other nations _have_ attacked us, after all," he clasps his hands tight. "Tell them that Sozin's biggest, most _horrible_ lie was to convince our people that a whole other race deserved to be wiped out, because of the actions of some of its members." Zuko's eyes, the scarred and the unscarred, almost leak with emotion. "Teach the children--teach _everyone_\--to never, _ever_ believe that lie again!!"

Zuko composes himself, and continues with the things that most of them agree on: that the wisdom of Avatar Roku must be brought back to the light--that all four elements are equal, and that none of them should ever reign over any of the other three. "Do not teach the children, or any of our people, to be ashamed to be born of Fire," Zuko summarizes, in his strong husky voice; "teach them that it is their duty now to _redeem_ the element of Fire. To bring it back to what it is _supposed_ to be--warmth and life, not destruction and death!"

Iroh smiles from the shadows as he watches, near a row of columns outside the chamber. His advice would probably have been something similar, but he did not even have to give it. _Thank You,_ he prays, solemnly but happily, _for making my nephew, my adoptive son, so wise._

***

"Do you wanna read my letter to Metok, Bapa?" Chiko squeaks happily, pushing a scroll into Iroh's beard.

"Of _course_ I do, darling!" the old man laughs, as he and his adoptive daughter bound out of the front door together.

_This was another of Zuko's suggestions as Fire Lord. When he heard Aang speaking of his friendship with Kuzon--the Fire child he had known a hundred years before--he decided that such friendships should be rekindled. That they should be made stronger and more numerous than they ever were before, if at all possible, so that they would never fail again._

_When he outlined his simple plan for this, the Air elders, hesitant though they were at first, agreed. Soon every Fire Nation schoolchild was assigned an Air Nomad pen pal, and messenger-hawk eyries were set up next to the stalls of the sky-bison. The Air children (and adults as well--it would take all of their still-small number, sadly, to equal the amount of Fire children) could all reply easily this way, from within the safety of their own temples. Temples that they were just beginning to settle into themselves! So much had changed, in only two-and-a-half months._

"She told me she got her tattoos last month, in her letter. Air Nomads don't have their blue marks when they're born, did you know that, Bapa?" Chiko goes on prattling, and Iroh swallows a chuckle. "I told her I'm gettin' ready to be an auntie real soon. Do you think Jin-Jin is gonna have the baby today?!" the little girl hops up and down, clearly excited.

Iroh _does_ chuckle aloud now, giving her a little cuddle. "No, I don't think she will _today,_ sweetheart. If we thought it was getting _that_ close, we wouldn't be going to this puppet show, we'd be staying up there with _them!_" he explains calmly. "We'll probably start spending nights at the palace next week--that's when the doctor says it will happen, either that or the week after." Iroh and Chiko always spend at least _one_ night a week with Zuko, anyway--but the old Firebender wants to be on-hand at _all_ times for the young royal couple, _every_ day surrounding the coming birth of their first child.

At the moment, though, he and Chiko are going to relax and enjoy their trip to the market, and to its little show-booth. Iroh picks up a sack of dried noodles from one vendor, and allows himself to splurge on a little bottle of perfume from another. Then he settles down on one of the Earthtown benches, placing his shopping-basket beside him, and Chiko on his lap. He chuckles fondly again, at her eager squirming towards the puppet-show curtains.

_Many old stories are being told now--tales that only the most ancient of elders, both Fire and Air, remember. Those precious few as old as King Bumi, in their hundred-and-tens or more, were all interviewed for every tale and anecdote they could give. And the tales of more recent heroes--those few Fire Nationals who had futilely spoken out against Sozin, and ones who had aided Earth and Water prisoners during the war--are all being told now as well. And even the saddest of these stories are framed to end with some note of hope--a dove-rabbit flying forward with a banner of peace, or a little Fire puppet and Air or Earth or Water puppet walking off together as friends._

Iroh watches all the neighborhood children--some Earth, many Fire--gathered on the benches, and his old amber eyes glisten. Several of them tote plush sky-bison toys, freshly-bought from the vendors, and laugh and wave them around in the air. They all coo with wonder as the miniature theater's story unfolds.

Today's puppet show is a cute story about an Air Nomad child and a Fire Nation child, who want to help the Air child's baby sky-bison fly to the end of a rainbow. It's quite a cheerful tale--one of the harmless ones well-suited for the youngest crowds, about the good times before the war, instead of the horrors that came after.

So Chiko, in her innocence, cannot understand why her father suddenly starts crying softly into her hair.

_Thank You,_ Iroh prays simply, as he cuddles his little girl in his lap--and she and the other Fire children cuddle their sky-bison dolls, and cheer the little Fire puppet and Air puppet alike. _Thank You. Thank You. Thank You._


End file.
